


The Great Leap Forward

by ben_wyattt



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - 1990s, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Basically lots of gay socialist being mad about Margaret Thatcher and AIDS, F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 04:05:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2334641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ben_wyattt/pseuds/ben_wyattt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The only gay cause I was going to fight was mine, which chiefly involved meeting other guys and getting laid."</p><p>It's September, 1989. Grantaire has just started an Art History degree at the University of Manchester, but one thing he definitely has no time for are the countless political societies which plague the campus. That is until he bumps into a man he can only assume is an angel, and heads to University of Manchester: Gays and Lesbians Society, against his better judgement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Great Leap Forward

I was late. Late and hung-over. It’s not like this was surprising. True to form I had used my first night at university to get absolutely shit-faced and woken up two hours too late with a strange guy in my bed. I’d kicked him out, pulled on the clothes I stumbled home in last night, doused myself in lynx and left.

Oxford Road was packed, in a way it only is during fresher’s. First years drifted in packs, with only half an idea of where they were going. Direction wasn’t a problem for me, I’d grown up here, this city was in my blood. What was going to hold me up was the throng of people: lost newbies; exuberant club promoters – desperate to convince anyone that their shit hole was the place to spend their fresher’s week; then there were the campaigners, politically minded do-gooders whose sole purpose in life was to get you to sign their petition or join their union. The campaigners were my least favourite kind of fresher’s week pests. It astonished me that after a decade under Maggie Thatcher they still thought they could actually change anything.

I zipped up my Harrington jacket, pressed play on my Walkman  and barreled down the down the street, head down and collar up. I’d managed to pretty effectively block everything out and I made fairly quick progress most of the way down Oxford Road, past the Cornerhouse and the Deaf Institute, it looked like I might actually make it to my induction on time.

And then I crashed into some guy.

He was a campaigner, the flyers he’d been clutching fluttered to the ground.

“Shit…Sorry.” I said, bending to help him gather them together.

“No worries.” He said, in what sounded faintly like a French accent. I looked up and caught his eyes.

Fuck…he was beautiful.

He had this halo of golden curls, not blonde, like actually golden. His eyes were this unnatural green-brown colour. His lips were held in a permanent pout and he bit his lip in a way which just wasn’t fair.

I directed my eyes back down to the pavement, concentrating on the dropped flyers. I reached out to grab one which had fluttered away, he did the same. Our hands brushed. I know this sounds properly juvenile but my stomach went fluttery. It was stupid, I was a grown man, but there I was, reduced to a nervous, blushing wreck, from some guy’s hand brushing mine.

I pulled my hand away, and left it sort of awkwardly floating next to me. He picked up the last few leaflets and stood up. I was still squatting by the floor, like an idiot. He offered me his hand, I took it and stood up, avoiding eye contact.

“Thanks” He said, the left side of his mouth quirking up into a half smile.

I imagined how that half smile would look underneath me…in bed, then mentally slapped myself.

I could feel my cheeks getting hot and I knew that my face would be turning bright red right now.

“Don’t mention it.” I said, turning to walk away.

“Here” He said, grabbing my shoulder. “Take a flyer.”

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t really breathe, and I definitely couldn’t think about anything, except the weight of his hand on my shoulder.

“I’m Enjolras…It would be cool to see you at a meeting.” He pressed a leaflet into my palm and turned away.

I shoved the flyer into my pocket and forced myself to turn around and carry on down the street.

I got to my lecture hall ten minutes late and stood outside for a few seconds, checking my reflection in the glass display case which hung on the wall next to the door. I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to force my curls into some sort of style. I folded the down the collar of my jacket and pulled the hem of my faded Smiths t-shirt down in an attempt to hide the skin peeking out between it and my jeans. Then I took a deep breath, opened the door and walked in.

As sods law would have it the door I had entered through opened into the front of the hall. I felt every pair of eyes in the room fall on me at once.

The professor - a fairly young, trendy looking guy wearing thick rimmed glasses and chinos – paused his lecture and turned to look at me.

“Nice of you to join us Mr…”

“Grantaire.” I supplied. He nodded, and scribbled something on the piece of paper on the lectern in front of him.

“Do you think you can manage to be on time for my lectures going forwards this semester?”

I nodded. “Lovely. Take a seat then.”

I walked as briskly as I could and crammed myself into the only empty space left in the hall.

The seat next to me was occupied by a guy who had clearly put a lot of thought into his outfit for the first day of term. His hair was arranged into this elaborate style which fell somewhere between Boy George and those birds you see in documentaries about the rainforest. He’d elected to wear a knee length fur coat, even though the tail end of August sunshine had clung on into the first few weeks of September. His feet were tied into a pair of thick soled brothel creepers. He was wearing a “Frankie Says Relax” shirt which I’m sure he’d chosen to be edgy or ironic or something. His faced was thickly painted and sharply contoured with makeup, in a way which danced the very thin line between Grace Jones and Pete Burns. He was such an art student.

“Hi, I’m Jehan.” He whispered.

His purple lips spreading into a smile which made the dark powder contours on his cheeks look even weirder.

“Grantaire” I replied with a small smile.

I slumped further down in my seat and pulled my A5 sketchbook – a moving away present my mum had picked me up at Woolworths last week – out of my bag. I opened it to clean page and scribbled down the key information, which was bullet pointed on the blackboard behind the professor.

As the he droned on about the many and various details of our curriculum and our timetables and other shit which I would work out on my own later, I started sketching on the opposite page. Without really concentrating on what I was doing, I had managed to draw a handsome boy with fair curls and lips set into a permanent pout.

Enjolras.

I wrote his name next to the sketch in my jagged, untidy script. The name seemed to fit him somehow. It seemed important, stately.

I looked up from my page and noticed Jehan peeking over my shoulder. I quickly snapped the book shut and stared forward, focusing on the wall at the other end of the hall, as if I could burn a hole through with my mind if I tried hard enough.

I tried to focus in on what my professor was saying, something about research papers on a topic of our choice - thrilling. I tried to keep my mind on which artistic movement or artist I would write about, but every train of thought brought me back to Enjolras. It wasn’t exactly difficult to make links, in a lecture on classical art, Enjolras could easily have been carved out by Carpeaux or painted by Caravaggio.

This was ridiculous, there was absolutely no reason for me to be this preoccupied by someone I had exchanged less than ten words with. He was probably just another middle class twat being angry about political injustices he had never experienced.

I pulled the flyer out of my pocket and smoothed it out on the desk. Across the top were the words “University of Manchester: Lesbians and Gays Society.” Written in block letters, each a different colour of the rainbow. Underneath that was a pink triangle. Details of a time and place were crammed at the bottom in a neatly spaced print. They’d forked out for colour photocopying, this was professional set up.

I rolled my eyes and shoved the flyer back in my pocket. There was no way I was going to a Lesbian and Gay society, not for any hot guy in the world. Morrissey, Holly Johnson and Adam Ant could all be members and that still wouldn’t be enough hot guys to convince that is was worth wasting my time on.

The whole gay pride thing was so pointless and reductive. If gay people spent all the time they wasted trying to get straight people to understand us and make space for us, making their own spaces and getting on with their own lives things would be so much easier. The only gay cause I was going to fight was mine, which chiefly involved meeting other guys and getting laid. It was nice to have something to strive towards and they were fairly simple goals.

On the other hand, a group dedicated to gay issues would mean a high concentration of gay dudes. It would be like an all you can gay buffet.

People started to stand up and trudge towards the door. While I had been contemplating my political future the lecture had finished – I didn’t know anything more than when I walked into the room.I stood up, throwing my bag over my shoulder and crumpled up the flyer. I couldn’t go – It was completely unethical to use a campaign group to pick up guys, and there was no way I was going on my own that would just be tragic.

I was still putting my belongings back in my bag when Jehan brushed past me on his way out of the room. He turned over his shoulder and waved at me.

“Maybe see you around, Grantaire.” He put emphasis on my name, like he was showing off that he’d remembered it.

I nodded and went back to packing away my things. I was about to chuck the crumpled up flyer into my bag, to be lost forever in its depths, but something stopped me. I turned, expecting Jehan to still be looming over me like a peacock, but he’d gone.

I jogged down the steps towards the door of the lecture theater and out into the corridor. The narrow hallway was filled with people heading from one class to next, but Jehan wasn’t difficult to spot, a 6 foot guy in platform shoes with hair like a cockatiel tends to stand out in a crowd. I pushed through the crush of people until I caught up with him. I tugged loosely on his sleeve, he stopped dead in his tracks and turned to face me.

“Hey…” I said already feeling stupid. “This is just a hunch, but I wondered if this is something you’d be into checking out with me?” I thrust the flyer into hand.

He unfolded and raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow.

“What makes you think I’m gay?” He asked with a smirk.

“Dude…” I said, grinning. “You’re not exactly subtle.”

“Okay.” he fell quiet reading the flyer. “Yeah it sounds fun, but I don’t know how to get to Canal Street.”

“That’s alright, I live in a flat on Sackville Street, and it’s really close by. I can meet you outside the student union at 6 and we can go together?”

“Sounds good” Jehan said with one of his wide, alien looking smiles. With that he headed off into the stream of people. I turned down another corridor towards the cafeteria. I was in severe need of a coffee and bacon barm before my next class.

**Author's Note:**

> I've read a TONNE of of Les Mis College AUs so I thought I would give it a go, and then stuck it in the late 1980s, in Northern England because that is where socialists fit best.
> 
> Opinions of characters represented do not reflect the opinions of the writer.


End file.
